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At first glance, you wouldn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary is lurking inside the nondescript building in Torrance, California. But step through the doors, and a massive warehouse filled with a cornucopia of significant Hondas and Acuras emerges – each vehicle with a story to tell.

Few people have set foot inside. There are approximately 50 vehicles in all, not including 12 currently stored in a warehouse off-site. The collection is not open to the public and there are no plans to change that policy. Even most Honda employees have never been here. It has the feeling of a shrine of sorts; a place where the Honda/Acuracognoscenti would gladly come to worship.

The man responsible for the shrine, make that museum, is former American Honda employee Lou Staller. A lifelong car enthusiast, Staller has always been passionate about collector cars. After 32 years of employment with American Honda, the museum was a chance to take his hobby to the next level, with backing from the automaker.

Clearly, these aren’t your ordinary Accords and RLs, as we observed during a recent tour of the facility. Interested in historic production models? There’s a pristine 1970 Honda N600, a 1975 Honda Civic and a 1988 Honda CRX Si to reminisce about. Race cars you ask? A lineup of IRL and CART open-wheelers as well as race-winning Acura NSX and Integra models line the back wall. Motorcycles? Yep, there’s a bunch of them too. Numerous other significant vehicles round out the collection, including a rare 1997 EV Plus, the first electric vehicle to be marketed in the U.S.

Engines perch on stands along the museum’s perimeter, some with cutaway sections that expose polished exhaust valves and camshafts. Old magazine advertisements grace the walls and a trophy case sits in one corner, flanked by two Honda Racing motors. Large “Powered by Honda” lettering is mounted high above the race cars.

The museum, known to many as the American Honda Private Collection, is obviously something of a labor of love for Staller, who tries to pick the cars himself – the standards of others sometimes being not as high as his own. “I’ve relied on some of our service and sales reps before to look for cars and they say ‘Oh, yeah, it’s really good!’ he recalled. “Well you have to roll down the window of your car as you’re driving by the thing before you tell me it’s good!”

Staller has various methods for hunting down vehicles he needs. “We post the list of cars we need on the internal Honda web. I also spend time on eBay and Auto Trader and just look for what we need,” he said. “That’s really the process. We have a list we created and we’re just chipping off the list.”

Some cars are obviously tougher to find than others — Staller could go on for hours about cars that were right year, wrong condition, or vice-versa — but sometimes they just seem to come to him.

“A lot of people call me and say ‘Two houses away from me an original Odyssey is sitting in the driveway,’ and there’s a white one sitting there and all I have to do is knock on his door,” said Staller.

It’s easy to mistake the cars assembled here as brand new, plucked from the production line machines that were gently placed into a time capsule. But they have all seen road (or track) use, which makes them all the more amazing. So far, none of the cars have required major cosmetic surgery. Staller is particularly proud of an Acura Legend he was tipped off to by a Northern California Acura dealer.

“I bought it from the original owner with 104,000 miles on it and that’s the way we took delivery,” he said, glancing at the sedan’s brilliant grey paintwork and flawless body panels. “We didn’t do a thing to it.”

There are big plans for the future. A re-creation of the first American Honda corporate headquarters in Los Angeles that was converted from an old carpet shop is planned, along with a second floor mezzanine. Staller also has another project cooking that he’s especially excited about.

“After the mezzanine is installed we’re going to take a corner that we’re going to call the concept corner and we’re going to bring some concept cars here,” Staller said excitedly. “We’ve got the RDX concept car which is a really bad looking car, but it was really cool at the same time. We’re also going to put the aluminum shell of an NSX that we have in storage back there.” Ambitious plans for sure, but preservation of Honda’s history is a priority here.

There are 18 left cars on Staller’s hit list; 16 Hondas and two Acuras. Taking the list out of his shirt pocket and gently unfolding it, he mentions that the most elusive has been a 1973 Honda Civic – the first year of production. Something about the tone in his voice says he’ll find it someday soon.